A Destiny of a Lady of the Night

"You have to understand, for these women in poor countries, prostitution is their only way to earn money. At least they have a way to get some income."

I've heard that from so many people. I searched through the internet to see if I could find anything on the effects of prostitution. I came across this studies, Freedom and Justice Center by Ruth Parriott.

1- Injuries

Research conducted with 68 women in Minneapolis/St.Paul who had been prostituted for at least six months found that half the women had been physically assaulted by their purchasers, and a third of these experienced purchaser assaults at least several times a year. 23% of those assaulted were beaten severely enough to have suffered broken bones. Two experienced violence so vicious that they were beaten into a coma. Furthermore, 90% of the women in this study had experienced violence in their personal relationships resulting in miscarriage, stabbing, loss of consciousness, and head injuries.

2- Sexually Transmitted Diseases

General gynecological problems such as Chronic Pelvic Pain, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID), HIV/AIDS, hlamydia, Gonorrhea, Herpes, Human Papilloma Virus and Syphilis.

15% of the women had never contracted one of the STD's, 31% of the women interviewed had experienced at least one episode of PID and among these women there was a high incidence of positive pap-smears, several times higher than the Department of Health's cervical cancer screening program for low or middle income women. More STD's episodes can increase the risk of cervical cancer.

3- Unwanted Pregnancy and Miscarriage

Over two-thirds of the women in the Minneapolis/St. Paul study had an average of three pregnancies during their time in prostitution, which they attempted to bring to term. Other health effects include irritable bowel syndrome, as well as partial and permanent disability.

4- Emotional

The emotional health consequences of prostitution include severe trauma, stress, depression, anxiety, self-medication through alcohol and drug abuse; and eating disorders. Almost all the women in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul study categorized themselves as chemically-addicted. Crack cocaine and alcohol were used most frequently. Ultimately, women in prostitution are also at special risk for self-mutilation, suicide and homicide. 46% of the women in the Minneapolis/St. Paul study had attempted suicide, and 19% had tried to harm themselves physically in other ways.

5- Suicide and Homicide

Women in prostitution are also at a greater risk for self mutilation, suicide and homicide. 46% of the women interviewed in the above study had attempted suicide and 19% had tried to harm themselves physically in other ways.

So, prostitution is the only option for these women and therefore we should let the violence continue?

Born Into Brothels

Earlier tonight I watched the documentary titled Born Into Brothels.

This is a heart breaking story of children from Calcutta, India who live in homes of prostitutes. Photographer Zana Briski spent two years working with these children, teaching them to take pictures and giving them the freedom and artistry to tell their story through their camera lens. The story line is heartbreaking, as Briski attempts to convince these children and their parents to allow them to attend boarding school. The education they received would give them a better life and future. What was most shocking to me was the abuse. The high level of physical and verbal abuse these kids endured by their mothers. I was shocked that a mother would speak to their children with such hatred and disdain.

Prostitution is defined as the act, practice or profession of offering the body for sexual relations for money. There are so many causes of child prostitution.

1- Misery and Poverty

Poverty is the most common reason why most families sell the services of their female children to augment their income in order to buy food or clothes and other necessities of life. The case of child labour is a typical factor that exposes children to prostitution. The hired female children are sent out to hawk food items on the streets, motor parks, and mechanic garages thereby exposing them to rapes as well as sexual harassments.

2- Unemployment

Unemployment of either the parents or the child results in unreliable source of income thereby forcing children into prostitution as an alternative means of income to support the family. According to the International Labour Organization, observes that a child’s ability to earn money is limited. It is estimated that the money earned by the child only contributes to approximately 10% of the family’s overall income and therefore has minimal effect on the family’s monetary gain. Due to high degree of unemployment, the brothels employ some female children who serve in their drinking spots to promote their business.

3- Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is another evil leading to child prostitution. It represent the world’s third largest criminal activity following only after drug and weapons trafficking is sometimes purported to send teenagers to other countries to work. These would be workers who sometimes end up prostitute actually work and repatriate money to their respective home countries. Many times, hard times hit these fellows as they are deported to come and continue this profession at home. Some of the female prostitutes come home to take some younger females to their places either to help them or to make them their servants and at the long run they get converted to prostitution, which is their boss’ profession.

4- Dysfunctional Family Environment

Children of broken homes sleep wherever they see space to do so in the day, and go to the disco and nightclubs in the night. The ill treatment of children at home might make them to take to the street in order to find solace. Then the end result may be the hawking of their body to support themselves.

5- Poor Education

Some children cannot support themselves materially in view of low educational training they received, so they resort to prostitution as their only profession. Girl-child Education Initiative In Africa highlights the effect of poor education in the whole of Africa. In connection with poor education, peer pressure, bad association and street ganging contribute to child prostitution. Identifiably, a girl may end up as a prostitute by her association, peer pressure and by running with a street gang.

6- AIDS

The high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS make customers of prostitutes to look for children who are considered to be of low risk, and most probably virgins. Patrons of child prostitutes are willing to pay a great deal of money to be a girl’s first client. In the streets, brothels and drinking spots these days a lot of female children are being employed to help lure more male customers to their spots.

7- Rebellion and Feeling Independent

This is another factor promoting child prostitutions. Some girls are shamelessly bold. What is more, they feel that the body is theirs thus they should decide what to do with their body.

8- Pornography

Pornography also puts viewers at increased risk for developing sexually deviant tendencies.Pornography is identified as promoting “the rape myth” which is a belief that women cause and enjoy rape. Additionally, the repeated use of pornography interferes with the ability to enjoy and participate in normal marital intimacy. Dr. Victor Cline, who specializes in treating sex addiction claims that “deviant sexual acts results” when a viewer tries to act out the pornography-based fantasies.

9- Rape

Some youths were raped in their own homes, which act changed their outlook in life. Some of such ones give vent to prostitution. Two other closely related causes of prostitution are glamour associated with it and insatiable sexual urges in some females. Some prostitutes take to this lifestyle because of their innate desire for glamour or that they want to maintain a standard of life.

10- Sudden Exposure

Illicit love affairs in the presence of children may subject them to early prostitution. Some parents perform extra marital affairs in the presence of their wards. This exposes the children to early sex life. The premature death of one or both of the parents has also been discovered as one of the causes of child prostitution. Because of the chasm created by such loss, a teenage girl may be fraught with the onerous task of catering for herself and other family members. More importantly, no one may exist to give stern guideline on her.

Rhinoceros + Horse

Imagine yourself sitting in a field and having a picnic. All of a sudden, a big white horse comes towards you. Then you notice a big horn coming out of its head. It's a unicorn.

According to the Wikipedia website, the unicorn is a legendary creature like a horse, but with a slender, usually spiral, horn growing out of its forehead. In popular mythology, unicorns were hunted for their horns, which were said to protect one against diseases.

There are lots of debate about reality of the unicorn. A creature said to possess great powers and pureness, the unicorn has a presence in the mythology of many places around the world. But Where Do They Come From? Different theories circulate as to how the animal came to captivate people and create its place in history.

Chinese Unicorn

In China, the unicorn was called ki-lin or quilin and it was an omen that all was well with the world, (perhaps the reason why we haven’t seen once in a while).

According to Animal Forum, it is also believed that the unicorn foretold the birth of Confucius, by visiting his pregnant mother in the woods one day and bringing her a piece of jade. The man himself was later reported to having seen the unicorn himself, interpreting it as a message of his impending death.

Japanese Unicorn

The Japanese call the unicorn Kirin and his likeness is that of a bull with a long shaggy mane. Quite different from most interpretations of this beast, the Japanese unicorn is an animal to be feared, especially if you have guilt in your heart.

India

Legend has it. It was a unicorn that saved India from Genghis Khan’s ravaging armies. The tale says that as Genghis Khan prepared to invaded India he was met by a unicorn who knell in front of him. He took this as a sign from the heavens telling him not to attack and turned away.

Unicorn Cave Art

Lascaux cave art in southwestern France, (the unicorn is on the left), this is some of the most well known Upper Paleolithic art and dates back to around 14,000 BC. This is a section of around 2000 animal representations in this cave, some of which include horses too.

Bucephalus

After that, the first mentions of a unicorn in the western world are in the 3rd and 4th century BC. Aristotle was a believer, as was Alexander the Great who rode the mighty Bucephalus into battle and Julius Caesar who claimed he saw one deep in the forests of Germany. Even Marco Polo was later said to have seen a unicorn the size of an elephant on his many travels to Asia.

Medieval Unicorn

The unicorn of midieval times is said to be a wild beast which is impossible to tame. In fact the only way to tame one is to lay a virgin maiden as bait and wait until a unicorn wanders along and lays its head in her lap. Although much of the unicorn art that comes from this time depicts the maiden having tricked the unicorn by trapping him for an accomplice to slay. Tales of the mighty unicorn from this time are largely biblical in source and the animal was thought to symbolize Christ himself in many respects.

Everyone wants to believe in the magnificent unicorn. Robert Vavra did a great job to convincing us with his collection pictures of unicorn. While I am browsing internet to find proofs of the unicorn existence, I came across this pictures and this is convinving although I am doubt with it’s validity. If it isn’t real, it is a well done fake.

Whether you believe it or not, be sure to check out this video.

Let's play mix and match. If unicorn is a mix of horse and rhinoceros what will happen if:

1- Human + Butterfly = Fairies

2- Human + Wolf = Warewolf

3- Human + Fish = Mermaid

4- Human + Goat = Faun

5- Human + Horse = ?

Watch this video and you will get the answer.

P/S: I wish to credits Youtube, Google Image and Wikipedia for the videos, images and informations used here.